Read Online The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty - Free Book Online
Authors: Eudora Welty
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Longmeier. If even a crooked piece of stitching were pointed out to her, she was apt to return: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
“Oh, I’ve modeled myself on this noble Roman,” declared the Mayor, sending out his palm above the casket. “And when I reach higher office—” He strode off to join the other members of the Bar. Laurel saw that they were all sitting more or less together on a row of dining room chairs, like some form of jury.
Miss Thelma Frierson creaked over the floor and stood above the casket. She had filled out the fishing and hunting licenses at her Courthouse window for years and years. Her shoulders drooped as she said, “He had a wonderful sense of humor. Underneath it all.”
“Underneath it all, Father knew it wasn’t funny,” said Laurel politely.
“Too bad he ever elected to go to the hospital,” old Mrs. Chisom said. “If he knew what ain’t funny.”
“I tell you, what they let go on in hospitals don’thardly bear repeating,” said Sis. “Irma says the maternity ward in Amarillo would curl your hair.”
“Doctors don’t know what they’re doing. They just know how to charge,” said Bubba.
“And you know who I wouldn’t trust for a blessed second behind my back? Nurses!” cried Mrs. Chisom.
Laurel looked over their heads, to where the Chinese prints brought home by an earlier generation of missionary McKelvas hung in their changeless grouping around the mantel clock. And she saw that the clock had stopped; it had not been wound, she supposed, since the last time her father had done duty by it, and its hands pointed to some remote three o’clock, as motionless as the time in the Chinese prints. She wanted to go to the clock and take the key from where her father kept it—on a small nail he’d hammered, a little crookedly, into the papered wall—and wind the clock and set it going at the right time. But she could not spare the moment from his side. She felt as though in death her father had been asked to bear the weight of that raised lid himself, and hold it up by lying there, the same way he’d lain on the hospital bed and counted the minutes and the hours to make his life go by. She stood by the coffin as she had sat by his bed, waiting it out with him. Unable to hear the ticking of the clock, she listened to the gritting and the hissing of the fire.
Dr. Woodson was saying, “Clint and me used to take off as shirt-tail lads with both our dogs and be gone allday up in the woods—you know where they used to call it Top o’ the World? With the gravel pit dug out of the claybanks there. I’ve been his doctor for years, hell, we’re the same age, but after all this time it hasn’t been until now that something made me think about his foot. Clint went swinging on a vine, swinging too wide and too high, and soared off and came down on a piece of tin barefooted. He liked-to bled to death a mile from home! I reckon I must have carried Clint into town on my back and used strength I didn’t know I had. You know Clint always gave you the impression you couldn’t kill him, that nothing could, but I believe he really must have been kind of delicate.”
Light laughter broke out in the room and hushed itself in the same instant.
“Is this it, Aunt Sis?” Wendell Chisom asked. “Is it the funeral yet?”
“It’ll be the funeral when I say so,” said Sis.
“After I’d got him here, he fell out cold. But there’s houses in sight by then. It’s where the Self-Serve Car Wash is now. I reckon I’m to blame for saving Clint’s life for him that time!”
“Father was delicate,” said Laurel.
“With everything that’s the matter with me, you’d have thought he’d outlive me,” the doctor went on.
“Not for me or you to ask the reason why,” Mrs. Chisom told him. “It’s like the choice between Grandpa and my oldest boy Roscoe. Nobody in Texas couldunderstand what the Lord meant, taking Roscoe when He did.”
“What happened
“Oh, I’ve modeled myself on this noble Roman,” declared the Mayor, sending out his palm above the casket. “And when I reach higher office—” He strode off to join the other members of the Bar. Laurel saw that they were all sitting more or less together on a row of dining room chairs, like some form of jury.
Miss Thelma Frierson creaked over the floor and stood above the casket. She had filled out the fishing and hunting licenses at her Courthouse window for years and years. Her shoulders drooped as she said, “He had a wonderful sense of humor. Underneath it all.”
“Underneath it all, Father knew it wasn’t funny,” said Laurel politely.
“Too bad he ever elected to go to the hospital,” old Mrs. Chisom said. “If he knew what ain’t funny.”
“I tell you, what they let go on in hospitals don’thardly bear repeating,” said Sis. “Irma says the maternity ward in Amarillo would curl your hair.”
“Doctors don’t know what they’re doing. They just know how to charge,” said Bubba.
“And you know who I wouldn’t trust for a blessed second behind my back? Nurses!” cried Mrs. Chisom.
Laurel looked over their heads, to where the Chinese prints brought home by an earlier generation of missionary McKelvas hung in their changeless grouping around the mantel clock. And she saw that the clock had stopped; it had not been wound, she supposed, since the last time her father had done duty by it, and its hands pointed to some remote three o’clock, as motionless as the time in the Chinese prints. She wanted to go to the clock and take the key from where her father kept it—on a small nail he’d hammered, a little crookedly, into the papered wall—and wind the clock and set it going at the right time. But she could not spare the moment from his side. She felt as though in death her father had been asked to bear the weight of that raised lid himself, and hold it up by lying there, the same way he’d lain on the hospital bed and counted the minutes and the hours to make his life go by. She stood by the coffin as she had sat by his bed, waiting it out with him. Unable to hear the ticking of the clock, she listened to the gritting and the hissing of the fire.
Dr. Woodson was saying, “Clint and me used to take off as shirt-tail lads with both our dogs and be gone allday up in the woods—you know where they used to call it Top o’ the World? With the gravel pit dug out of the claybanks there. I’ve been his doctor for years, hell, we’re the same age, but after all this time it hasn’t been until now that something made me think about his foot. Clint went swinging on a vine, swinging too wide and too high, and soared off and came down on a piece of tin barefooted. He liked-to bled to death a mile from home! I reckon I must have carried Clint into town on my back and used strength I didn’t know I had. You know Clint always gave you the impression you couldn’t kill him, that nothing could, but I believe he really must have been kind of delicate.”
Light laughter broke out in the room and hushed itself in the same instant.
“Is this it, Aunt Sis?” Wendell Chisom asked. “Is it the funeral yet?”
“It’ll be the funeral when I say so,” said Sis.
“After I’d got him here, he fell out cold. But there’s houses in sight by then. It’s where the Self-Serve Car Wash is now. I reckon I’m to blame for saving Clint’s life for him that time!”
“Father was delicate,” said Laurel.
“With everything that’s the matter with me, you’d have thought he’d outlive me,” the doctor went on.
“Not for me or you to ask the reason why,” Mrs. Chisom told him. “It’s like the choice between Grandpa and my oldest boy Roscoe. Nobody in Texas couldunderstand what the Lord meant, taking Roscoe when He did.”
“What happened
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